Vertigo
             

Firs adamant, as always. Stream
metronome to the opus of all there is.

Late November leaves crack,
gold beneath my longing,

beneath all our symphonic genius —
perfume a possible  

that still might allow us.
For now we endure

through our atonality — ice sheets
fractured, ash-strewn ruin,

cities fading into sea.
A planet moves to refute us

as I lapse from communion,
vertigo surging between the human

and that desperate taunt — wholeness.
My lungs yearn for soil, wood, lavish moss,

for ages suspended in every stone —
not the bite of a world

bowed beneath our ache —
compassion we've disfigured

until blessing became bane,
until what it does most

is undo — until all we have left
is the dissonance of a love song

that tears us from the center of all things.